Molding is an extremely powerful process because of the ability to transfer small details and surface finish from a mold to molded parts. U.S. Pat. No. 5,166,993 discloses molded optical components. However, techniques used in this patent application are limited to producing optical components that interconnect relatively large optical fibers having very thin optical cladding in comparison to the diameter of the optical core.
Molding has not been used to produce optical components for interconnecting optical fibers when the cladding and core have a small overall diameter such as 125 microns. For interconnecting these smaller optical fibers, a fusing technique has been used to physically fuse the optical fibers using heat and tension. Also etching and ablation techniques have been used to individually produce each optical component. Both of these techniques suffer from high costs. Further, these two techniques do not provide a direct mechanism for physically securing the optical fibers to the optical component which is often called pigtailing.